


Not Gay

by testosterone_tea



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Awkward Conversations, First Kiss, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Late Night Conversations, M/M, POV Sherlock Holmes, Questioning, Questioning!John, Sexuality Crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-29
Updated: 2014-03-29
Packaged: 2018-01-17 11:44:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1386424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/testosterone_tea/pseuds/testosterone_tea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which John is questioning his straightness and Sherlock instigates a late night conversation to try and straighten out (or not) the whole sexuality situation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Gay

**Author's Note:**

> See, I don't just write porn. Anyway, I just wrote this as a possible explanation for why John so vehemently denies that he's gay, and yet never says anything about a) not being straight b) not being attracted to Sherlock.  
> Also, some of the things that John has to put up with in the show kind of made me angry on his behalf, so that's in there too.

"For the last bloody time, I am NOT gay!"

Lestrade and his team stared in astonishment at John's retreating back, for once leaving Sherlock behind to offer apologies in his stead.

Not that Sherlock ever apologized.

"You shouldn't make John angry. He sulks and refuses to make tea," Sherlock said, frowning at them over the crime scene. "Now look, he's left me to figure the crime out alone. He never does that."

It was their fault as far as Sherlock was concerned. Trying to force John to be anything never ended well. He could have told them that if they'd asked.

"It was just a joke," Sally said. "Perfectly harmless fun."

"It's always the same thing," Sherlock said with a roll of his eyes. "You imply to John that he has a sexual relationship with me, I pretend not to understand and John gets flustered and defensive. Surely you're tired of it and have something else you could possibly say instead?"

"So you do understand then?" Anderson asked in a tone that spoke of disbelief.

"Obviously," Sherlock said, leaning over the corpse while pulling on a pair of latex gloves. "Just because you've never seen evidence that my Mind Palace has a basement doesn't mean it doesn't exist."

"That where you keep all the naughty bits then?" Lestrade asked gruffly. "Come on, Sherlock, give me something to work with here."

Sherlock sighed and turned his attention back to the crime scene. This would be much less boring if John were here to tell him how amazing he was. Stupid Donovan and her inability to keep her ignorant remarks to herself.

"Obviously she's a student on exchange from a colder country. If I had to guess I would say either from the northern States or Canada. Wearing a light hooded sweater and a t-shirt in the middle of winter. She doesn't have an umbrella. Any Londoner knows that in winter, going without is utter madness and yet this girl was going without. But look at her footwear – the bottoms have good traction, they're warm. She's used to walking on ice, look at the wear pattern. They're her only pair, which is why she's wearing them here. Student, carrying a laptop bag, but has clothes at least a year old..."

"Where's her passport then?" Donovan demanded, hands on her hips. "Her wallet is here, and there's ID and everything. It's her, look. You're wrong, she's English, studying at Reading."

Sherlock snatched the wallet from her, absence of John all but forgotten.

"That's not her. Look, eyebrow ring in the ID, no eyebrow ring and no evidence of a scar suggesting she ever had one. This case just went from a 4 to an 8. Ah, the game's afoot!"

oooOOOooo

When Sherlock came through the door of 221B, it was late, just after 11 at night. He'd been on the case for almost 12 hours straight and had returned home triumphant, ready to tell John exactly how brilliant he'd been. He'd completely forgotten that John had stomped off at the crime scene in a fit of anger and hadn't even texted to find out where Sherlock had gone.

The silence was oppressive as Sherlock came in, and he halted abruptly as he remembered.

Right. Sally's comment. John leaving.

As Sherlock had predicted earlier, John was sulking in his chair, pretending to read yesterday's newspaper without his customary cup of tea on hand. Even more telling, he hadn't looked up at Sherlock's arrival or offered him tea or reheated leftovers. Something was wrong.

"John?" he asked hesitantly, edging further into the flat.

John grunted, but didn't raise his eyes.

It wasn't what Sherlock hoped, but it was a start. Sherlock came further into the flat and sat on the end of the couch. Usually, he would have flopped down dramatically and immediately recounted their successful apprehension of the murderer just as they were about to board a flight into Toronto.

Sherlock didn't really know what he should say in order to get John to relax. He wasn't even sure if John actually wanted to talk about it, or if he would rather Sherlock left him alone. He sat there silently and waited, hoping that if he was patient, John would tell him what had made him so upset. Sherlock, by nature, was not a patient man, but he would wait for John. 

Finally, John said, "I'm not gay."

"Can I ask you a question, John?" Sherlock asked hesitantly.

John gave him a hard look, but nodded curtly. 

"What upsets you so much about having people assume that you're gay?"

There were not that many answers to this question, and although Sherlock suspected a little what the answer might be, the point of the exercise was to get John to figure it out himself. As Sherlock knew very well, forcing John Watson to be anything never worked.

John took a long time to answer. He was chewing on his lip, contemplating something very hard.

"Sherlock, if I tell you something, will you promise not to tell anyone?"

It was Sherlock's turn to think something over, but he decided that even if John were to confide that he were a serial killer, Sherlock still wouldn't tell anyone. So he nodded firmly.

"I'm not gay... but I don't think that I'm quite straight either," John admitted, running a nervous hand back through his hair. "It's something I've been wondering for a while now."

Oh. Just like John to approach the problem head on. Sherlock had expected at least a little dithering around the subject, but John was steadfast in all his endeavours.

"So you worry about people thinking you're gay, but actually..."

"It's not that I'm homophobic or scared of liking men," John said defensively. "I told you when I first met that everything was fine, and I meant that. Even for myself, that's fine. It's just that, I hate people thinking that my identity is other people's to assume. It's my identity and mine alone. Even if I am questioning it, that's for me to know and no one else."

"No one?" Sherlock asked, blinking in surprise. Surely John had at least asked Harry some questions, especially considering that she was part of the community herself?

"Ah, no," John flushed. "You're the only person I've told anything so far. That's why I asked if you could keep it to yourself. I'm still not sure about how I want to identify or if I'll ever tell anyone else but you. It would make me upset if you told anyone else."

"So even if you like men, you wouldn't identify as gay to anyone else?" Sherlock asked, trying to clarify. John might not know how he identified now, but if he talked it out, then maybe he'd come to a satisfactory conclusion.

"That's another thing," John grimaced. "The fact that I might like men doesn't erase the fact that I like women."

Women. Sherlock had never really understood the appeal, and even his interest in Irene Adler had been purely a fascination with her cerebral qualities and not her physical ones. John must have caught a glimpse of his expression because he raised his hands.

"No, don't be like that. I do genuinely like women, and liking men doesn't mean that I wouldn't be attracted to them anymore. That's one of the things that bothers me the most is that people are dismissing the women that have been in my life as insignificant, as if they were just placeholders until I came out as gay. That's not the way it works at all."

As much as Sherlock had disliked John's past girlfriends, he couldn't say that John hadn't had a very real and vested interest in them. It was obvious that he cared for them emotionally as well as being physically attracted to them.

"So what upsets you is that they're writing your past relationships off as if they never existed or weren't valid in some way," Sherlock said, and John nodded, looking relieved.

"Yes, that's exactly it. Those relationships were important, and they matter to me. They shaped the way I developed as a person and made an impact on my life in ways that have nothing to do with my possible attraction to men."

"If you did start a relationship with a man as you did with women..."

"I would still be attracted to women. I wouldn't be gay no matter what, simply because I still feel an attraction to the female form. It's not that I think there's something wrong with only being attracted to men, but by that definition, I can't be gay."

"So that's why you always say you're 'not gay,' but you never say definitively that you 'are straight,'" Sherlock mused. "I have to admit I had noticed that peculiarity."

"Thank you for not bringing that up in public," John said, sighing.

"Please, John. I know that would have made you angry, just as Sally did earlier," Sherlock snorted. "There's nothing to gain from making you angry enough to forego having tea."

"You still leave entrails in the bathtub."

"You still make me tea when I do so."

John laughed, but added, "In all seriousness though. I still haven't really figured out what exactly is going on, and I'm not really ready to have my sexuality under scrutiny and to have people decide what I am without my input. I'm not really ready to tell people that I'm not straight. They'd ask all sorts of questions and I wouldn't have any answers."

"You shouldn't feel obligated to tell anyone anything, John."

John shook his head and ran his hand through his hair again. "I know. I just can't stand the assumptions. It's like they're trying to force me to do something."

They sat in silence for a few moments, but Sherlock finally got the feeling that John was feeling more like himself again and less likely to storm off in a rage.

"John, if you don't mind me asking, what was it that made you start questioning your straight identity in the first place?" Sherlock took in John's shocked expression and hastily added. "Not that you should answer if you don't want, but..."

"How could you not know?" John breathed.

Sherlock's lips tightened. It was a failing, he knew. He hadn't been able to deduce this, and it had been driving him a bit mad not knowing this one thing.

"I know it was after you left Afghanistan," Sherlock said. "All those fit men in uniforms, and that's not what made you wonder at all."

"Like a fit man in uniform, Sherlock?" John asked with a smile.

Sherlock blushed. "Shut up. Just tell me what it was!"

It wasn't Mike, John had known him before Afghanistan, and he'd been younger and fitter then. He'd played rugby, not that anyone would know to look at him now. It wasn't Mycroft, thank God. He was wondering maybe if it could be Lestrade, because Lestrade was a good man in an exciting career, and John liked excitement.

John stood up from his armchair and crossed the room to where Sherlock sat. He leaned over him, and Sherlock looked up at him, still not sure that it wasn't Lestrade. Sherlock would be a bit put out if it were Lestrade, actually. That was an emotion worth examining...

John leaned down and suddenly, they were nose to nose. Sherlock's eyes crossed as he tried to focus on John's face.

"It was you, you complete and utter berk."

Sherlock's brain screeched to a halt.

"Oh," he said, nonplussed. 

"I've never kissed a man," John admitted from an inch away.

"I've never kissed anyone," Sherlock said, which was something he hadn't told anyone, although Mycroft could guess all he liked.

"Would you like to?"

Sherlock thought that maybe, perhaps he would. He dipped his chin in a minute nod, giving John his permission.

Their lips met between them, soft.

Just before Sherlock's mind drifted away after more pleasant pursuits, he thought that maybe they were overcomplicating this whole business. Maybe John liked men, maybe he didn't. He was still attracted to women, and Sherlock knew that very well. But John liked Sherlock, or at least he was giving a fair impression of it, and Sherlock, startled as he was by this turn of events, very much liked John. 

John could take all the time he wanted to figure out what he wanted to call himself, as long as he also called himself Sherlock's.


End file.
